Heading for home

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 72

Well, the last two days of my journey have come to a close. I started on Thursday with a 10 a.m. flight from Summit to Kanger. Once again, we rode in a Herc-130. I also got to sit in the cockpit for the last part of the flight. It was great!! The pilots were really cool, and gave me a great tour as we flew into Kanger. Looking at the ice sheet as we neared the edge of it, I could see the huge crevasses that result from the moving and bending of ice at the head of the glacier. As we neared Kanger, they flew the plane quite low through the gorge, so that I could get the best view possible. It was stunning!! I even saw two musk ox as we flew by!

Shortly after getting settled in the KISS (Kangerlusuaq International Science Support) building, I went to meet a teacher at the local school. School was not in session at the time I visited, because they get out at 2:00, but I was lucky enough to meet the teacher and a few of the students. These boys were very nice. They were a little shy to use their English, but when I did get them to talk, they were great!! At the same time I was visiting, a member of the Air National Guard was visiting also. He was there because they donated a number of toys to the school. The kids were really grateful and excited to have these new things!

The school is very small, 60 kids total for grades 1-9. I spent a little time with the teacher who works with the 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. She has a class of 15 kids. They were very nice, although they were very shy about speaking English to me. I liked showing them where I lived and worked. They had a map of Wisconsin on the wall, since their penpals are from Wisconsin, too!!

After the school visit, we went to dinner at the dining hall. True to form, the food there was….well.. interesting. It was some sort of fish, cut into thick sections. The worst part was that that was all they did! It still had scales, fins, and spinal cord in it. YUCK!!! I personally stuck to the bread for dinner.

Early the next morning, Travis took Barry and I on a safari to look for musk ox. We did see some, but they were pretty far away. We thought we might be able to get a closer look from another part of the road, but when we went there, they were hidden from view by some rocks. We went back to where we originally saw them, and I took some pictures. I attempted to get some close-ups by taking pictures through binoculars, but that didn’t work very well. We also went to the top of black ridge to look at what type of rock the mountains are made of (it is mostly granite and basalt). While we were there, we didn’t see any caribou, but we did see caribou poop (boy, I sure wish I had taken a picture of that) J . As we were heading back down the ridge, we saw a flock of artic geese. They are black with white faces. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get very close to them either.

Then it was time to get on the long flight from Kanger to Scotia. I spent most of this time trying to sleep, although it didn’t work very well because the flight was crowded. It was much more fun than the trip to Kanger, though, since this time I knew most of the people around me. That way, we could pass the time by doing things like this to the others as they slept:
I wonder what obnoxious things they did while I was sleeping….

When we got back to Scotia, the work was not done yet. We had to spend a couple hours sorting equipment into piles by school. Some of the equipment was loaded onto trucks to be taken back to their homes, and some was left to be shipped later.

Most of us had to say our goodbyes tonight. I said goodbye to Cort, Kelly, Jack, Greg, Steve, Eddie, and Mac. I was really excited about going home to be with my family, but it was a little sad to say goodbye to my new friends. Andreas, Donna, Barry, and I could not get flights until the next morning, so we checked into our hotel rooms and then went out for a nice dinner. After dinner, we said our goodbyes since I had to be at the airport at 5:30 a.m. to catch my flight home.

All the way home I thought about the experiences I had on this trip. What a great adventure it was. I learned so much, made new friends, and created memories that will last a lifetime. I am so lucky to be able to share this experience with others. Hopefully everyone who has read these journals has enjoyed them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

I honestly have no idea how I am going to top this…. Perhaps something tropical…..J